With two new game consoles hitting this week and next the whole of American media has video games on the brain.

Which is why this article in the New Yorker really stands out: it's about the rise of video games–especially military-style shooters-in Iraq.

“Video games are the only viable entertainment we have here,” said Mohannad Abdulla, a twenty-five-year-old network administrator for Baghdad’s main Internet service provider. He’s been playing games since he was a teen-ager; a poster of Captain Price, a fictional British Army officer from the video game Call of Duty hangs on his wall. “Other hobbies are just too dangerous because of terrorism. We don’t have clubs, so games are the only way to have some fun with friends and stay safe at home, where there is no risk of being killed by a suicide bomber. For many of us, video games are our only escape from these miseries.”